


to the very sinew

by badass_normal



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-05
Updated: 2010-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-11 01:23:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/106750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badass_normal/pseuds/badass_normal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Either way, she's a pawn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to the very sinew

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flaky_artist](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=flaky_artist).



> Contains dialogue from "Across the Sea."

The rules of Jacob's game are what send Ilana fleeing into the jungle at the age of thirteen. Because sometimes when a girl turns thirteen, any constructs designed to maintain order become rather undesirable. Order, frankly, is for children and for adults. Teenagers will have nothing to do with it and, no matter the unconventional manner of Ilana's upbringing, she produces the same hormones as the most average of adolescents.

For the past seven years she's been learning how to fend for herself. Perhaps the idea that she can survive without Jacob is a delusion of grandeur, but Ilana has taken no risks in her life thus far, and something lures her away from her protector, off the beach and even further into the wild, unknown green.

(It's also because something is waiting for her, and that something has nothing to do with Jacob. She'll let you know when she figures it out.)

\--

Two years later, she's hasn't heard from Jacob. Hasn't heard from anyone. The Dharma Initiative lives behind an impenetrable fence, the Island's near-silent natives are easy to avoid for a girl on her own.

Sometimes she hears whispers. Sometimes she sees the shadow of someone moving in the trees. Sometimes she hears foliage crashing to the ground, sometimes she hears metallic whirring and clinking. Never close enough to quicken her heart or strike the ice in her veins.

She meets a man.

If Ilana knew anything about the Bible, maybe she could recognize a serpent when it slithers around her neck and makes itself a home and whispers sweet nothings in her ear like hoarse velvet, creamy and melodic. Maybe she would notice as his coils tighten, as the air squeezes hard and shallow into her lungs and her esophagus uncomfortably folds against itself.

Maybe not. Few people do, and this Devil has never been one to really embrace the serpent thing anyway.

\--

It doesn't take long. She is fifteen and he is a sensual object with a hard body that passes easily for human. His seduction is efficient and intoxicating and, for lack of a better word, addicting.

Intimacy is new, and the feelings accompanying her encounters with this man are something Ilana doesn't quite understand at her age. But she does, feel. She feels and she craves and she obsesses.

\--

_There is nothing across the sea._

She insists, looking up at him from where her head rests against his chest.

_There are many things across the sea. You come from across the sea too._

He says it like it barely matters.

\--

"You killed my real father!" she screams, the knife the man in black gave her pressed at Jacob's throat.

"Who told you that, Ilana?" Calm as nothing. Voice flat. Eyes pained like it's _his_ heart that is breaking.

"The man in the jungle. The man who is not high and mighty enough to refuse to touch me with any kind of affection."

"My touch," Jacob whispers, "will make you suffer." He does not move away from her knife. Almost leans into it. "So will his, eventually."

"_Why_?"

"You are not like us."

"What are you, then?" she demands.

"He was a man, once," Jacob tells her without looking at her, evasive as ever. "Now he is an example of what happens when the Light in a man's heart goes out."

Her hand trembles and a line of red appears on his neck. "Why should I believe you?"

"Drop the knife. I'll show you."

There is conflict in her heart but she does as she is told because she has sensible instincts and this will serve her well someday. But mostly because the Island isn't done with Jacob yet, and Ilana is an incidental piece of material compared with the men and women to come.

The moment the knife falls to the ground, a pillar of rage howls from the jungle. Jacob gets to his feet and slowly retrieves a pouch from his pants and sprinkles a circle of ash around her. Carefully.

Loud and frightening, the ticking moves closer, cracking the trees open and she wants to run and scream but the gentleness in Jacob's eyes makes her trust him.

The black cloud stops before her and flashes violent and sublime white in her face and tears of terror streak her cheeks but she glares and stares it down and knows that _this_ is her lover and it wants her dead.

It vanishes into the jungle after a few moments, never to be seen by her again.

She drops to her knees and sobs and wishes the _thing_, the darkness, had killed her.

"He wants me dead," Jacob says. "You're not the first and you won't be the last pawn of his."

_Pawn_.

"And what about you?" she gasps as her shoulders heave with the grief of shattered love.

"What _about_ me?" he replies, and that tells her all she needs to know.


End file.
